Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
of our discussion, but only that it should induce us to treat it more
philosophically, and in a manner more worthy of our increased audience.
What do you allude to? said Laelius; or what was the discussion we broke
in upon? Scipio was asking me, replied Philus, what I thought of the
parhelion, or mock sun, whose recent apparition was so strongly
attested.
_Laelius._ Do you say then, my Philus, that we have sufficiently
examined those questions which concern our own houses and the
Commonwealth, that we begin to investigate the celestial mysteries?
And Philus replied: Do you think, then, that it does not concern our
houses to know what happens in that vast home which is not included in
walls of human fabrication, but which embraces the entire universe--a
home which the Gods share with us, as the common country of all
intelligent beings? Especially when, if we are ignorant of these
things, there are also many great practical truths which result from
them, and which bear directly on the welfare of our race, of which we
must be also ignorant. And here I can speak for myself, as well as for
you, Laelius, and all men who are ambitious of wisdom, that the
knowledge and consideration of the facts of nature are by themselves
very delightful.
_Laelius._ I have no objection to the discussion, especially as it is
holiday-time with us. But cannot we have the pleasure of hearing you
resume it, or are we come too late?
_Philus_. We have not yet commenced the discussion, and since the
question remains entire and unbroken, I shall have the greatest
pleasure, my Laelius, in handing over the argument to you.
_Laelius._ No, I had much rather hear you, unless, indeed, Manilius
thinks himself able to compromise the suit between the two suns, that
they may possess heaven as joint sovereigns without intruding on each
other's empire.
Then Manilius said: Are you going, Laelius, to ridicule a science in
which, in the first place, I myself excel; and, secondly, without which
no one can distinguish what is his own, and what is another's? But to
return to the point. Let us now at present listen to Philus, who seems
to me to have started a greater question than any of those that have
engaged the attention of either Publius Mucius or myself.
XIV. Then Philus said: I am not about to bring you anything new, or
anything which has been thought over or discovered by me myself. But I
recollect that Caius Sulpicius Gallus, who was a man of profound
learning, as you are aware, when this same thing was reported to have
taken place in his time, while he was staying in the house of Marcus
Marcellus, who had been his colleague in the consulship, asked to see a
celestial globe which Marcellus's grandfather had saved after the
capture of Syracuse from that magnificent and opulent city, without
bringing to his own home any other memorial out of so great a booty;
which I had often heard mentioned on account of the great fame of
Archimedes; but its appearance, however, did not seem to me
particularly striking. For that other is more elegant in form, and more
generally known, which was made by the same Archimedes, and deposited
by the same Marcellus in the Temple of Virtue at Rome. But as soon as
Gallus had begun to explain, in a most scientific manner, the principle
of this machine, I felt that the Sicilian geometrician must have
possessed a genius superior to anything we usually conceive to belong
to our nature. For Gallus assured us that that other solid and compact
globe was a very ancient invention, and that the first model had been
originally made by Thales of Miletus. That afterward Eudoxus of Cnidus,
a disciple of Plato, had traced on its surface the stars that appear in
the sky, and that many years subsequently, borrowing from Eudoxus this
beautiful design and representation, Aratus had illustrated it in his
verses, not by any science of astronomy, but by the ornament of poetic
description. He added that the figure of the globe, which displayed the
motions of the sun and moon, and the five planets, or wandering stars,
could not be represented by the primitive solid globe; and that in this
the invention of Archimedes was admirable, because he had calculated
how a single revolution should maintain unequal and diversified
progressions in dissimilar motions. In fact, when Gallus moved this
globe, we observed that the moon succeeded the sun by as many turns of
the wheel in the machine as days in the heavens. From whence it
resulted that the progress of the sun was marked as in the heavens, and
that the moon touched the point where she is obscured by the earth's
shadow at the instant the sun appears opposite.[298] * * *
XV. * * *[299] I had myself a great affection for this Gallus, and I
know that he was very much beloved and esteemed by my father Paulus. I
recollect that when I was very young, when my father, as consul,
commanded in Macedonia, and we were in the camp, our army was seized
with a pious terror, because suddenly, in a clear night, the bright and
full moon became eclipsed. And Gallus, who was then our lieutenant, the
year before that in which he was elected consul, hesitated not, next
morning, to state in the camp that it was no prodigy, and that the
phenomenon which had then appeared would always appear at certain
periods, when the sun was so placed that he could not affect the moon
with his light.
But do you mean, said Tubero, that he dared to speak thus to men almost
entirely uneducated and ignorant?
_Scipio._ He did, and with great * * * for his opinion was no result of
insolent ostentation, nor was his language unbecoming the dignity of so
wise a man: indeed, he performed a very noble action in thus freeing
his countrymen from the terrors of an idle superstition.
XVI. And they relate that in a similar way, in the great war in which
the Athenians and Lacedaemonians contended with such violent resentment,
the famous Pericles, the first man of his country in credit, eloquence,
and political genius, observing the Athenians overwhelmed with an
excessive alarm during an eclipse of the sun which caused a sudden
darkness, told them, what he had learned in the school of Anaxagoras,
that these phenomena necessarily happened at precise and regular
periods when the body of the moon was interposed between the sun and
the earth, and that if they happened not before every new moon, still
they could not possibly happen except at the exact time of the new
moon. And when he had proved this truth by his reasonings, he freed the
people from their alarms; for at that period the doctrine was new and
unfamiliar that the sun was accustomed to be eclipsed by the
interposition of the moon, which fact they say that Thales of Miletus
was the first to discover. Afterward my friend Ennius appears to have
been acquainted with the same theory, who, writing about 350[300] years
after the foundation of Rome, says, "In the nones of June the sun was
covered by the moon and night." The calculations in the astronomical
art have attained such perfection that from that day, thus described to
us by Ennius and recorded in the pontifical registers, the anterior
eclipses of the sun have been computed as far back as the nones of July
in the reign of Romulus, when that eclipse took place, in the obscurity
of which it was affirmed that Virtue bore Romulus to heaven, in spite
of the perishable nature which carried him off by the common fate of
humanity.
XVII. Then said Tubero: Do not you think, Scipio, that this
astronomical science, which every day proves so useful, just now
appeared in a different light to you,[301] * * * which the rest may
see. Moreover, who can think anything in human affairs of brilliant
importance who has penetrated this starry empire of the gods? Or who
can think anything connected with mankind long who has learned to
estimate the nature of eternity? or glorious who is aware of the
insignificance of the size of the earth, even in its whole extent, and
especially in the portion which men inhabit? And when we consider that
almost imperceptible point which we ourselves occupy unknown to the
majority of nations, can we still hope that our name and reputation can
be widely circulated? And then our estates and edifices, our cattle,
and the enormous treasures of our gold and silver, can they be esteemed
or denominated as desirable goods by him who observes their perishable
profit, and their contemptible use, and their uncertain domination,
often falling into the possession of the very worst men? How happy,
then, ought we to esteem that man who alone has it in his power, not by
the law of the Romans, but by the privilege of philosophers, to enjoy
all things as his own; not by any civil bond, but by the common right
of nature, which denies that anything can really be possessed by any
one but him who understands its true nature and use; who reckons our
dictatorships and consulships rather in the rank of necessary offices
than desirable employments, and thinks they must be endured rather as
acquittances of our debt to our country than sought for the sake of
emolument or glory--the man, in short, who can apply to himself the
sentence which Cato tells us my ancestor Africanus loved to repeat,
"that he was never so busy as when he did nothing, and never less
solitary than when alone."
For who can believe that Dionysius, when after every possible effort he
ravished from his fellow-citizens their liberty, had performed a nobler
work than Archimedes, when, without appearing to be doing anything, he
manufactured the globe which we have just been describing? Who does not
see that those men are in reality more solitary who, in the midst of a
crowd, find no one with whom they can converse congenially than those
who, without witnesses, hold communion with themselves, and enter into
the secret counsels of the sagest philosophers, while they delight
themselves in their writings and discoveries? And who would think any
one richer than the man who is in want of nothing which nature
requires; or more powerful than he who has attained all that she has
need of; or happier than he who is free from all mental perturbation;
or more secure in future than he who carries all his property in
himself, which is thus secured from shipwreck? And what power, what
magistracy, what royalty, can be preferred to a wisdom which, looking
down on all terrestrial objects as low and transitory things,
incessantly directs its attention to eternal and immutable verities,
and which is persuaded that though others are called men, none are
really so but those who are refined by the appropriate acts of
humanity?
In this sense an expression of Plato or some other philosopher appears
to me exceedingly elegant, who, when a tempest had driven his ship on
an unknown country and a desolate shore, during the alarms with which
their ignorance of the region inspired his companions, observed, they
say, geometrical figures traced in the sand, on which he immediately
told them to be of good cheer, for he had observed the indications of
Man. A conjecture he deduced, not from the cultivation of the soil
which he beheld, but from the symbols of science. For this reason,
Tubero, learning and learned men, and these your favorite studies, have
always particularly pleased me.
XVIII. Then Laelius replied: I cannot venture, Scipio, to answer your
arguments, or to [maintain the discussion either against] you, Philus,
or Manilius.[302] * * *
We had a friend in Tubero's father's family, who in these respects may
serve him as a model.
Sextus so wise, and ever on his guard.
Wise and cautious indeed he was, as Ennius justly describes him--not
because he searched for what he could never find, but because he knew
how to answer those who prayed for deliverance from cares and